I approved a token but received nothing: did I swap?

An approval gives a spender permission to use a token. It does not, by itself, exchange that token for another asset. If your wallet shows one confirmed transaction and no output tokens, inspect that transaction before trying another approval.

Identify the action you confirmed

On the correct chain’s explorer, compare the transaction’s decoded action with its token movements. An approve call and an Approval event usually indicate an allowance change. A swap should produce the expected asset movements or a protocol-specific settlement result. ERC-20 defines approval and transfer as separate operations.

The transaction’s destination may be the input token contract during approval. The spender authorized inside that call is another address. Seeing a familiar token address as the transaction destination does not establish that the intended router received permission.

Resume without repeating the wrong step

1. Confirm the approval succeeded for your active account, token, network and intended spender.
2. Return to the genuine aggregator and request a fresh quote. The price you saw before approving may no longer apply.
3. Review the new output, minimum received, recipient and network fee.
4. Confirm the swap only if those details still match your decision.

Uniswap explicitly lists approval without a completed swap as a reason tokens do not appear. Its interface may move to a swap action after approval; other applications may use different labels or combine steps.

If you stop here, no exchange has occurred merely because approval succeeded. You may still have an active spending permission. Check whether to retain that permission separately from whether you want to finish the trade. A later quote is not a reservation of the earlier price.